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After watching new Cleric Update, I have a thought: Interrupts
LordPax
Member
The one thing that i am hoping to see, in order to increase skill ceiling, are interrupts.
Guild Wars 1 did it best, but WoW and others have done it too. Skills were you interrupt the other's spell casting
It makes the Clerics Archetype special skill that much more important and strategic
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Interrupt
No game has ever replicated Memers from GW1, nor do I expect to ever see them again. However, some of the uniqueness with interrupts(especially with a universal 'mana' pool) is such an exciting opportunity for AoC
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Interrupt
Mesmer is a class I mentioned that had cool interrupt and 'control' options that worked around their other skills. (i.e. "Mind Wrack" made it so when the enemy hits 0 mana, they take X damage. Then, they had skills that, if they interrupt a target spell cast, caused them to lose mana.) These + other skills were strategic combos that gave control in a fight and added a different strategy for build other than "weapon with highest dps".
This post is not supposed to be a post about GW1 mesmers, but more about the strategic benefit of skills that are strictly designed to interrupt spell casts. If Ashes of Creation is going to introduce a list of skill which have multi-second spell casts, so much so that the Cleric's special ability reduces it, means that there is a wonderful opportunity for Intrepid to look into these styles of skills.
p.s. As a side note, I will try to remember to ask these questions during next month's livestream
Guild Wars 1 did it best, but WoW and others have done it too. Skills were you interrupt the other's spell casting
It makes the Clerics Archetype special skill that much more important and strategic
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Interrupt
No game has ever replicated Memers from GW1, nor do I expect to ever see them again. However, some of the uniqueness with interrupts(especially with a universal 'mana' pool) is such an exciting opportunity for AoC
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Interrupt
Mesmer is a class I mentioned that had cool interrupt and 'control' options that worked around their other skills. (i.e. "Mind Wrack" made it so when the enemy hits 0 mana, they take X damage. Then, they had skills that, if they interrupt a target spell cast, caused them to lose mana.) These + other skills were strategic combos that gave control in a fight and added a different strategy for build other than "weapon with highest dps".
This post is not supposed to be a post about GW1 mesmers, but more about the strategic benefit of skills that are strictly designed to interrupt spell casts. If Ashes of Creation is going to introduce a list of skill which have multi-second spell casts, so much so that the Cleric's special ability reduces it, means that there is a wonderful opportunity for Intrepid to look into these styles of skills.
p.s. As a side note, I will try to remember to ask these questions during next month's livestream
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
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And they obviously could have secondary effects that you mentioned and a variety of others as well.
the professor from ragnarok .-. or more like, the mesmer has skills like the prof in ro, since ro came first xD
I love when people post about gw1 mesmers because I never played the game but I read about them every time and they look like they were a lot of fun.
Oh yes please. After I posted, that immediately came to my mind that please let every class have some kind of interrupt. And give it some added class flare/use where people want to use it so will actually get put on their hot bar.
I don't disagree that some sort of 'de-targeting' ability could work, but thats more so for games like EVE where it takes a while to target. All i have to do is press 'tab' and an entire skill is rendered useless. Theres so few skills, I would personally want it to be focused around interrupting.
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
Absolutely! One of my reasons for posting. I mentioned the PvP aspect in my OP, but reality is that if an enemy is casting a 3 second 'meteor', interrupting it is just as necessary and useful.
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
I've never use "tab" in L2 so I don't really know how it works for ranged classes. How exactly do you pick the correct target when you have 20 enemies within your range? L2 had "next target" action, which functioned like "tab" seems to do in stuff like WoW and other mmos, but in L2 it only chose the closest target and had really limited use because of that.
I hope that interrupts are going to be more prevalent with melee abilities, with the purpose of making peel more important. We've only had in-depth reveals for ranged classes so far.
Or possibly certain classes will get interrupts through augments, as a way of fine-tuning balance.
Well configured Tidy Plates addon. It spotlights casters. 😳
idk if that can work, maybe with long cd...but imagine 8 people in the enemy party constantly interrupting your heals 1 after the other...
Working as intended. Your healer has to learn to better position themselves.
Hopefully your uninterrupted DPS casters make a good use of the inattention they're given.
Detargeting worked as an excellent interruption because of L2's TT skills predominance, in Ashes with characters being able to go 75% Action skills Detargeting isn't enough, creating the necessity of actual straight up interruptions skills that can be effective against Action skills.
Ashes can either make Detargeting and Interruptions separated things or merge both functionalities.
I hope they are separated, i'd rather have those skills be specific for counterplay instead of generalized.
Aren't we all sinners?
I'd like them combined purely to remove bloat from the game. And with a somewhat longer cd you'd need to choose when you cast it.
The base function is kinda the same between the two. You want to prevent the target from hitting you/someone. Detargeting just has a potential to disrupt several incoming attacks instead of just one, but that's counterbalanced by action mode, so it won't be as OP.
I hope not every archetype will have a hard CC interrupt. Sure, thematically it could be packaged in a way that it made sense for every archetype to have one, but for Clerics, Summoners and Bards it doesn't really seem all that close to their core themes. With that being said: This could, especially for these classes, be a perk of augmenting with another class that allows them to modify spells for interrupts and other casting killer spells.
For physical Archetypes like Tanks, Fighter, Rogues and Rangers I honestly think knockbacks and stun will mostly do the trick, though those would hybrid as movement control so that these classes will have to decide what they want to use that ability for, while mainly magic based classes should have dedicated anti-magic abilities.
Moving on to the spell CC I hope to see:
Well i don't think having the 2 types separated can be considered "bloat", but if combine it would certainly require longer CD due to the increased potential of the skills.
Yes their function is very similar, but their application differs, one is far better against a player that would go 75% TT skills and terrible against a 75% Action skills player, the other is the opposite, with both fuctionalities merged it will simple be excelent against whatever set of skills in any scenario.
Archeage for example which had far more Action Skills than L2 had both types existent and separated.
No idea which way Intrepid will decide to go tho.
Aren't we all sinners?
ok so we saw on the cleric stream that the range for skills is 35m. lets say the interrupts are also 35m, unless you are willing to make them all short range. so your healer is healing your melee, meaning he is at 35m from the melee. if the melee is hitting people, that means those people are also at 35m~ from your healer, which means they can just interrupt your healer. i dont know how better positioning helps here since you have to be at a specific range to heal your melee (unless you step back and dont heal your melee), and their cleric can be further behind healing.
what are you going to do when you are farming in an open world dungeon's room, then another party comes to your room and tries to fight you? where are you going to position yourself when there are walls behind you and you cant run to the entrance because another party is there?
open world pvp? well what about melee party vs melee party? where are you going to position yourself so you dont get perma interrupted?
the only time you wont get perma interrupted by 8 people on rotation is if you have a full ranged party and you are just running back and kiting. the cleric just stays behind their range dps and heal (unless you get rushed down by melees). in every other scenario, you are just getting interrupted over and over, and doesnt matter if your dps arent, since you arent interrupting their healer and he can actually heal his party. and if your party is also perma interrupting their healer, then at this point its just a dps vs dps party fight with no healers and the cleric might as well go afk.
That, right there, is a rather bold assumption to build your argumentation on. Melee types usually don't have many long range abilities in their toolbox. A few medium range, maybe, but as long as range focused types? Few. So, if your healer is indeed at 30-35m from the front liners, they should be out of range of the most melee enemies' interrupts and quite safe from the range classes' interrupts (unless they are also in melee range of your own party melee). Getting interrupted? Possible. Constantly shoot down? Unlikely.
Unless the entrance doorway is as large as the whole room, hugging the entrance wall means only those who actually enter the room can see/target you. And that's in a bare room. No columns, dais, throne, big jars, sarcophagus, etc. to break the line of sight.
Things you haven't considered:
1.a) Pulling that kind of constant interrupts is not that easy. It implies your opponents have established an order in which they are using this skill beforehand. Casting time are too short on most spells to call who's turn it is on the fly. If not, it's almost certain a double interruption will happen during the chain. If your opponents can pull it off: they're good. Good luck surviving them, interrupts or not.
1.b) It also implies the healer is, if not the target of all, constantly monitored. What it means is the healer will be focus fired upon soon, good luck surviving that. Interrupted or not.
2) Abilities have cooldowns.
3) Unless you fought other players in the last 90 seconds, your group started the fight green, your healer is immuned to CC, which probably include most form of interrupts.
4.a) As we saw in the last dev update about the clerics, some heals are instant cast. Can't interrupt those.
4.b) Not all interrupts silence the target.
5) We don't know what happens when a held heal is interrupted. Does it goes off at the current charge level or is it cancelled?
No no, I'd say it won't occur that often and for the rare times it will, you were screwed from the start because of how competent your opponents were.
You know, having some time to think about it, I actually think the de-targeting that you mentioned could be done in a way that's not a 'skill' on your hotbar like an interrupt would be, but more so a strategic ability like using stealth, camouflage, or some invisibility-type spell. Even if it's brief, it could be enough to disengage and run away
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-